Survivors Seek Japan's Past, in Photos

In Ofunato, Iwate prefecture, a volunteer last month cleaned photos caught up in March's tsunami. Residents of nearby Rikuzentakata searched last week through such recovered images.
Reuters

By

Daisuke Wakabayashi

May 11, 2011

RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan—The photographs, faded and dusty, are laid out on blue plastic sheets. A smiling schoolgirl in an ornate kimono holds a bouquet of flowers. A group of excited teenage boys huddle on a school trip. A party of red-faced men crowd around a long table filled with beers.

Weeks after the tsunami and earthquake in northern Japan, survivors in the town of Rikuzentakata are now going through heaps of dusted photo albums hoping to find memories of happier times. WSJ's Daisuke Wakabayashi reports.

The March 11 tsunami that devastated Rikuzentakata, a small seaside city in northern Japan, wiped away thousands of homes and left 2,000 residents dead or missing. As it swept away a community, the tsunami surge also carried off its memories, stockpiled on photographic paper and catalogued in albums.

As search crews recovered bodies in the weeks following the disaster, they also collected what waterlogged family albums and muddy pictures they found scattered within the rubble. Volunteer groups have since embarked on the tedious tasks of drying, cleaning and organizing hundreds of thousands of photos.

Two months on, residents of hard-hit coastal towns like Rikuzentakata are starting to move into temporary homes furnished with free appliances and home goods, a first step in the long process of reassembling their lives.

Over three days last week, volunteers in Rikuzentakata also displayed the first small installment of recovered photos, hoping to offer their owners a chance to reclaim a more tangible link to their past.

"When they thought they had lost everything and something like an old picture reappears, we think it will give them strength to move forward," said Tatsuya Hagiwara, a volunteer with the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention.

Photo Search

In a scene resembling a flea market, organizers spread out albums, yearbooks, diplomas and other keepsakes across a parking lot on the edge of town. A crowd quickly gathered, many seeking pictures of family members and friends who numbered among the dead and missing.

A yelp rose from the crowd. "That's me!" shouted Etsuko Kanno, showing a picture of a young woman in a wedding dress. The bride, laughing, covered her mouth with a white-gloved hand.

Ms. Kanno—now a 51-year-old grandmother, who arrived at the parking lot with her one-year-old granddaughter asleep on her back—said the picture was taken 26 years ago at a photo shop in neighboring Ofunato. The photographer, she recalled, snapped the picture without warning her.

"This was the happiest moment," she said, gripping the picture. "But this is only a picture of me. I wanted a picture of my husband."

The man she married a few days after that picture was taken died in the tsunami. The powerful waters swallowed their home, where he was spending a day off from work with his 83-year-old mother, who also died.

Pictures of her three daughters, grandchildren and husband were washed away with the rest of their possessions.

Some 2,300 people are dead or missing in Rikuzentakata and many small businesses were obliterated by the March tsunami. Survivors must make a heart-wrenching choice: Should they rebuild their town - or abandon it? WSJ's Lam Thuy Vo reports.

"I want something on paper that I can look at," she said. "I looked around and found nothing."

When volunteers began tackling the photo cleanup several weeks ago, they started with a wet clump of snapshots. They laid the pictures out to dry. They dusted dirt from individual photos with paint brushes, and wiped plastic album sheets clean with damp rags.

The process was time-consuming and imperfect. Only about 10% of the recovered photos, some still damp and covered in dirt, were displayed last week.

People who found photos belonging to them filled out a form and took the pictures. Organizers said they may take the rest of the photos by truck to the 65 different evacuation centers across the city.

For group photos, the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, one of the organizations leading the volunteering, plans to scan the pictures digitally and upload the images to the Internet. The group is working on a project to archive photos along with tsunami-related information from Rikuzentakata and nearby towns.

Earthquake in Japan

Yoshito Takahashi arrived at the parking lot as soon as the pictures were brought out. He went from album to album, turning each page. Then he moved to crates that held the loose photos and thumbed through each one. "There's nothing here," he mumbled to himself.

The 67-year-old retiree from a life insurer had escaped the tsunami by running to Rikuzentakata's new gymnasium, the designated neighborhood evacuation center.

As more than 100 people crowded the building on March 11, he searched for his wife. He couldn't find her. Within moments, water filled the building. Mr. Takahashi was one of the few survivors. Later, his wife's body was found at the shelter.

"It can even be a group photo," he said. "I just want to be able to see her."

He found a picture taken during a summer festival in their neighborhood 25 years ago. At the edge of the photo, Mr. Takahashi stood straight as an arrow, his graying hair still jet black. After scanning the photo, he said: "I don't see her."

Two days later, he was back. He said he didn't find any pictures the day before either, but he said he would keep coming.

Nearby, a woman held up an album and shouted: "This is ours."

Mr. Takahashi looked up and paused. Then he returned to the crate in front of him, moving from one picture to the next.

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